Adolf Vallazza

Adolf Vallazza

Child of artists, the father was an iron sculptor and the mother was daughter of the well-known painter Josef Moroder Lusenberg. Since childhood he reveals his natural talent for drawing and painting.

After his studies and apprenticeship in a workshop, he opened his sculpture studio in Ortisei in the 1950s and after 20 years of hard work he began to attract the attention of art critics who soon led him to exhibit his works in the most important galleries and museums around the world.

There has been publications, prizes, films, fame that has never influenced either the freedom or the highly personal creativity of the Artist, of the Man, of the Maestro Vallazza.

One day the fear knocked on the door. The courage went to open. There was nobody.
It was the dusty workshop door of Adolf Vallazza, big hands, deep eyes, enthusiasm and passion, a boyish face forever.

In the beginning it was not easy for him to abandon the traditional sculpture to devote himself to new things, never seen in Val Gardena, a place closed to the artistic avant-gardes anchored to the sacred, ludic and tourist art.

Adolf chose the courage, he traced his drawings which then became sculptures and soon he filled houses, churches, theaters and public places with enormous plastic figures that looked to the future, works of art to express depth and incandescence of being and existing everywhere and forever, in every place and in every time.

He was the first one to recover the beams and boards of old and disused farmsteads in order to give them new shape and new life.

He invented his personal style composing extraordinary dynamic figures, he did not choose the dimensions but the quality of conservation and life of the woods that matured over hundreds of years in the stables, barns and houses of the Val Gardena.

Adolf observed the woods for a long time, placed them where he could see and look at them, then he drew, then sculpted, cut, carved, watercolored and finally, like a happy child, he assembled, jointed, joined, tightly, with grace, patience, creativity and harmony.

Until a few years ago Adolf used to go daily to his shop to work, enjoy himself – he said – “an artist gives everything he is and has, he does what he feels to do, first of all an artist is and remains a generous man “.

Now at the age of 97 he spends his days in his home in Ortisei among his fondest memories. Every day he meets Someone, every day he looks at his path that is made essentially of harmony, beauty and closeness.

His works speak to him from every corner of the world and he listens to them, answers and smiles because he knows that whoever welcomes a thought does not receive something, but Someone. Every time, all the time, always.